


ex morte vita

by lawson



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Fade Demons, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:50:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9431465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawson/pseuds/lawson
Summary: i've been emotional over my current da2 run and i'm sharing it with the world





	

This

isn’t how it goes.

This isn’t how any of it is supposed to go.

The story Hawke’s imagined: Fenris meets with his sister tomorrow at the Hanged Man, an olive branch to a past he only remembers in fleeting, confused bursts. They convince her to take them back to Minrathous with her so they can track down Danarius and make the son of a bitch choke on his blood magic.

(Hawke is careful to never use the blood magic he knows where Fenris can see. He’s abstained entirely since Mother… there’s something horribly sobering about looking at your scarred wrists and only seeing the shambling remains of what used to be your mother, what was once countless other women.)

The story Hawke’s witnessing: Fenris on his hands and knees, coughing up blood, his sword tossed somewhere on the floor beside him.

To their credit, they’ve lasted a full five minutes, which is four and a half minutes longer than Hawke thought they would.

The first note was an accidental find, an unassuming scrap of parchment tucked into a picture frame, signed “The Band of Three”. It only snowballed from there -- whispered rumors of lost adventurers, something eldritch lurking in the undercity, wives’ tales of Kirkwall originally laid out as the site of a massive, unprecedented blood ritual to break back into the Black City itself.

Initially, Hawke thought nothing of it. Another story cooked up by the templars in town, another way to tie the nooses even tighter around mage throats, brand their foreheads in white-hot suns. And then he found another. And another. In the most mundane places: the qunari compound, under a false bottom of a chest, stuck to the underside of a rock by one of the Darktown lifts.

And then they stumbled into that cave outside town, looking for Anders’s “ritual” components. Asshole thinks Hawke doesn’t know how bombs are made.

Sure, they found the drakestone, but more importantly, they found a book, a name, a location. And Hawke, well of bright ideas that he is, suggested that they go check it out. Well, less suggested, more dragged Fenris and Aveline with him for a tour of Darktown.

Aveline passed out less than a minute in. She was lucky.

The only reason Hawke hasn’t doubled over, a shadow of Fenris, is that the… creature. Demon. She broke his staff. What remains digs into his chest but it’s keeping him afloat.

He won’t say her name again. Once was enough of a warning, enough of an in for her to dance visions of Mother and Bethany around him, distract him from her long enough that she could debilitate them like this.

Fenris says, “What are you waiting for, Hawke? She’s defenseless right now --”

Casting a spell isn’t defenseless. She summons a shade right under where Fenris struggles to keep some semblance of balance. The force of it throws him in the air, a bleeding rag doll, and his back slams against the opposite wall of the tiny, dingy room they’re stuck in. Hawke can’t find it in himself to shout, show any type of condolence. He’s thrown every spell he knows at this thing, he’s dangerously low on stamina, but none of it has fazed her. Not even the really cool trick where he forces someone (some _thing_ ) to relive their worst memories.

Fenris stops breathing.

Hawke’s never been a storyteller like Varric, able to spin wins out of the most impossible odds. He knows his options here.

He uses the jagged wood of his staff to scratch old scars open, finds the words to heal with an old, near-forgotten blood magic, and prays to the Maker that Fenris will forgive him for this.


End file.
